•Sustainable food product choices and curtailment are empirically distinguished.•Consumer segments differ in frequency and type of sustainable food behaviors.•Personal norms, knowledge, involvement ...and motives predict sustainable food choice.•Gender, knowledge and sustainability motives predict curtailment.
Food consumption is an important factor in shaping the sustainability of our food supply. The present paper empirically explores different types of sustainable food behaviors. A distinction between sustainable product choices and curtailment behavior has been investigated empirically and predictors of the two types of behavior have been identified. Respondents were classified into four segments based on their sustainable food behaviors: unsustainers, curtailers, product-oriented consumers, and sustainers. Significant differences between the segments were found with regard to food choice motives, personal and social norms, food involvement, subjective knowledge on sustainable food, ability to judge how sustainably a product has been produced and socio-demographics. It is concluded that distinguishing between behavioral strategies toward sustainable food consumption is important as consumer segments can be identified that differ both in their level of sustainable food consumption and in the type of behavior they employ.
Providing dietary suggestions based on an individual's nutritional needs may contribute to the prevention of non-communicable dietary related diseases. Consumer acceptance is crucial for the success ...of these personalised nutrition services. The current study aims to build on previous studies by exploring whether ambivalent feelings and contextual factors could help to further explain consumers' usage intentions regarding personalised nutrition services. An online administered survey was conducted in December 2016 with a final sample of 797 participants in the Netherlands. Different models were tested and compared by means of structural equation modelling. The final model indicated that the result of weighing personalisation benefits and privacy risks (called the risk-benefit calculus) is positively related to the intention to use personalised nutrition advice, suggesting a more positive intention when more benefits than risks are perceived. Additionally, the model suggests that more ambivalent feelings are related to a lower intention to use personalised nutrition advice. Finally, we found that the more the eating context is perceived as a barrier to use personalised nutrition advice, the more ambivalent feelings are perceived. In conclusion, the current study suggests the additional value of ambivalent feelings as an affective construct, and eating context as a possible barrier in predicting consumers' intention to use personalised nutrition advice. This implies that personalised nutrition services may need to address affective concerns and consider an individual's eating context.
Sustainable food consumption is an important aspect of sustainable development. When adopting a sustainable food lifestyle, consumers are confronted with complex choices. Today's food consumption is ...too complex to be explained by socio‐demographic factors exclusively. A broader perspective is needed. In order to explain behaviour across different consumer segments better, relatively homogenous segments of food consumers were identified by segmenting food consumers based on a wide range of variables. The current study aims to provide an overview of published studies that have segmented consumers with regard to sustainable food consumption. The literature review has been conducted by searching SciVerse Scopus for all relevant articles available until November 2010. The main criterion for including a specific study was the inclusion of empirical analyses of primary data, resulting in consumer segments with regard to sustainable food consumption. Sixteen articles were incorporated in the final analysis. First, the variables used for segmentation and profiling in the included articles have been categorized into three levels of abstraction: personality characteristics, food‐related lifestyles and behaviour. The three levels of abstraction proved to be helpful in categorizing the segmentation studies. The findings indicate that variables on all three levels were efficient in differentiating consumer segments regarding sustainability. In addition, the importance of price and health differed across the segments, although these variables are only indirectly related to sustainability. Second, the three most frequently identified consumer segments with regard to sustainable food consumption were: ‘greens’, ‘potential greens’ and ‘non‐greens’. These segments differed from one another on all three levels of abstraction. This implies that future segmentation studies should include variables on all levels of abstraction to get a complete picture of existing sustainable consumer segments. Marketers should be aware that targeting specific segments based on socio‐demographic variables exclusively is not sufficient. Personality characteristics, lifestyle and behaviour are all important to take into consideration. Attempts at stimulating sustainable consumption might be most effective when differences across consumer segments are taken into account. Future research is needed to explore the characteristics of different sustainable food consumer segments with respect to their potential contributions in promoting sustainable development.
Facilitating a transition to more plant-based and less animal-based diets would strongly alleviate the environmental impact of food, while plant-based diets can also decrease the health risks of ...excess meat consumption. So far, little is known about which underlying determinants can most effectively steer consumers to more healthy and/or sustainable food consumption. Gaining more knowledge about underlying determinants gives more insight into why certain interventions are effective or not in promoting healthy and/or sustainable food consumption among consumers.
In this systematic review real-life behavioural interventions are investigated that aim to promote more plant-based and/or less animal-based food consumption among consumers. The review focuses specifically on the interventions’ targeted determinants. In total, 48 articles (51 studies) are included in this review.
The findings indicate that targeting individual determinants (such as increasing consumers’ level of self-regulation) or environmental determinants (such as modifying portion sizes) is relatively effective to promote more plant-based and less animal-based food consumption. Almost all included studies that aimed to increase plant-based food consumption focus on fruit and vegetables. This implies a need for future real-life intervention studies to focus on plant-based food consumption other than fruit and vegetables, such as legumes or whole grains. Also, relatively few real-life intervention studies have been conducted that focus on a decrease in animal-based food consumption, either separately or in combination with increasing plant-based food consumption. This review is registered with PROSPERO - CRD42019125314.
•More plant-based food consumption has health and environmental benefits.•Insights in determinants show why behavioural interventions are effective or not.•Targeting individual or environmental determinants are most effective.•Real-life intervention studies on reducing animal-based food consumption are needed.•Real-life interventions on more diverse types of plant-based food are needed.
The need for a better understanding of food consumption behaviour within its behavioural context has sparked the interest of nutrition researchers for user-documented food consumption data collected ...outside the research context using publicly available nutrition apps. The study aims to characterize the scientific, technical, legal and ethical features of this data in order to identify the opportunities and challenges associated with using this data for nutrition research.
A search for apps collecting food consumption data was conducted in October 2016 against UK Google Play and iTunes storefronts. 176 apps were selected based on user ratings and English language support. Publicly available information from the app stores and app-related websites was investigated and relevant data extracted and summarized. Our focus was on characteristics related to scientific relevance, data management and legal and ethical governance of user-documented food consumption data.
Food diaries are the most common form of data collection, allowing for multiple inputs including generic food items, packaged products, or images. Standards and procedures for compiling food databases used for estimating energy and nutrient intakes remain largely undisclosed. Food consumption data is interlinked with various types of contextual data related to behavioural motivation, physical activity, health, and fitness. While exchange of data between apps is common practise, the majority of apps lack technical documentation regarding data export. There is a similar lack of documentation regarding the implemented terms of use and privacy policies. While users are usually the owners of their data, vendors are granted irrevocable and royalty free licenses to commercially exploit the data.
Due to its magnitude, diversity, and interconnectedness, user-documented food consumption data offers promising opportunities for a better understanding of habitual food consumption behaviour and its determinants. Non-standardized or non-documented food data compilation procedures, data exchange protocols and formats, terms of use and privacy statements, however, limit possibilities to integrate, process and share user-documented food consumption data. An ongoing research effort is required, to keep pace with the technical advancements of food consumption apps, their evolving data networks and the legal and ethical regulations related to protecting app users and their personal data.
Shifting our eating patterns toward less animal-based and more plant-based diets is urgently needed to counter climate change, address public health issues, and protect animal welfare. Although most ...consumers agree that these are important topics, many consumers are not particularly willing to decrease the meat intensity of their diets. In supporting consumers to shift their diets, it is important to understand consumers’ attitudes, motivations, and preferences related to meat consumption and to take differences across consumers on these aspects into account. This study aims to in-depth research meat abstainers (vegetarians and vegans), and to explore how and to what extent they differ from avid meat eaters and committed meat reducers in terms of their (1) socio-demographic characteristics, (2) attitudes and norms, (3) food choice motives, and (4) food preferences and behavior. A survey has been conducted among a representative sample of Dutch adults. Comparisons show that meat abstainers (
N
= 198) differ from committed meat reducers (
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= 171) and avid meat eaters (
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= 344) on the four included categories of variables. In terms of demographics, we largely confirm the stereotype of vegans and vegetarians being highly educated females. In attitudes and norms, large differences exist with meat abstainers being least pro-meat and avid meat eaters being most pro-meat. Food choice motives confirm this, with meat abstainers valuing animal welfare and a good feeling higher than committed meat reducers and avid meat eaters. Finally, differences across the groups are most pronounced in terms of their food preferences and consumption, with a much higher appreciation of plant-based protein sources among meat abstainers, a high appreciation of non-meat animal-based proteins across committed meat reducers and a high appreciation of meat products among avid meat eaters. This shows that although differences across the groups are gradual and expected, in terms of reduction motivations and preferences of protein sources the three groups (frequent meat consumption-meat reduction-meat avoidance) are very distinct, which makes it unlikely to expect big shifts from one group to another in the short term.
A shift towards more sustainable consumer diets is urgently needed. Dietary guidelines state that changes towards less animal-based and more plant-based diets are beneficial in terms of ...sustainability and, in addition, will have a positive effect on public health. Communication on these guidelines should be most effective when tailored to the motivations of specific consumer segments. Therefore, the current study (1) segments consumers based on the importance they attach to sustainability, health, taste and price of food in several food categories; and (2) tests different ways (with health arguments, sustainability arguments, or both) of communicating the dietary guideline. Three segments have been identified: pro-self, average, and sustainable conscious consumers. For pro-self and average consumers, the communication of both health and sustainability benefits made them think most about sustainability, although communication did not result in changes in dietary intentions in these segments. For sustainable conscious consumers, intention to reduce their meat consumption increased when both health and sustainability benefits were communicated. These research outcomes indicate the importance of segmentation research in the development of dietary messages. In addition, the findings show the importance of taking product category differences into account in studying consumer food motivations and intentions.
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A targeted approach to increase fruit and vegetable consumption, considering the heterogeneity of food choice motives across consumers and across contexts, is expected to be more ...effective than the often used ‘one-size-fits-all approach’. Therefore, the current study aims to increase understanding of consumers’ food choice motives across contexts, to identify consumer segments based on these motives and to gain insights in fruit and vegetable consumption, perceptions and demographic characteristics of these segments. An online survey was conducted in May 2015 among consumers in the Netherlands, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Poland, Spain, Greece, Croatia and Serbia. 3064 participants completed the survey on fruit and 2998 participants completed the survey on vegetables. Four segments were identified, differing in their focus on present versus future food choice motives for main meals at home and for other contexts. The segments differed in their consumption, perceptions of fruit and vegetables and in their demographic characteristics. Implications for targeted approaches to increase fruit and vegetable consumption are discussed.
Individuals can apply different healthy eating strategies to help them make healthy eating choices. Previous research showed that individuals differ in their preferred strategy, but also that a mix ...of strategies is often applied by a single person across contexts. The current research investigated the extent to which differences within an individual across contexts (i.e., meal moments, social environment and physical environment) predicted openness to healthy eating strategies in addition to personal predictors that differ between individuals (i.e., intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, physical opportunity and social opportunity). A representative sample of the Dutch adult population was recruited (N = 892). The within-individual (contextual) predictors were measured nine times just before a meal moment over a period of three weeks, by means of a smartphone application. The between-individual (personal) predictors were administered with a baseline questionnaire. Exploratory factor analysis distinguished three healthy eating strategies: Increasing healthy foods, Limiting unhealthy foods and consuming Light products. A random intercept model, in which within-individual predictors and between-individual predictors were entered successively, showed that context matters for openness to all three strategies, but is most important for increasing healthy foods and least important for light products. Individuals are most open to increase healthy foods at dinner as compared to breakfast, whereas the opposite is true for limiting unhealthy foods and consuming light products. Eating at home is beneficial for openness to all three strategies and eating with others positively influences openness to increase healthy foods but has no effect on the other strategies. Insights gained from this research increase our understanding of an individual's openness to apply healthy eating strategies.
•Importance of food attributes differs across food categories.•Three segments identified: pro-self, average and sustainable conscious consumers.•Segmentation based on food-category attribute ...importance.•The segments are related to healthiness and sustainability perceptions.•Synergy between perceptions of health and sustainability differs across segments.
Sustainability issues pose an important challenge to contemporary dietary patterns. Scientists more and more emphasize the importance of consumers shifting their dietary patterns towards consumption levels that are not only healthy but simultaneously consider sustainability. Therefore, the aim of the current study is to identify consumer segments based on importance consumers attach to a range of food-category attributes, with a special focus on sustainability attributes. In addition, the study aims to explore differences between the identified segments in their perceptions of synergy between healthiness and sustainability of food products. Three segments were identified: a pro-self, an average and a sustainable conscious segment. Synergy between perceptions of healthiness and sustainability differed across segments. The findings indicate the importance of taking food category differences into account. In addition, this study shows that importance attached to food-category attributes forms a valuable segmentation basis, as the segments relate to the perception of healthiness and sustainability of products. Implications for future studies are presented.
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